Quantum Leap Season Two - Music Replaced! (1 Viewer)

[Lutz Koch]

Let me just say that I did not notice any PAL speedup. Everything looked and sounded just fine. This of course doesn't really mean much since I'm not the kind of person who consciously notices things like that. Guess I'm just not sensitive enough. As soon as I find the time however, I will make a direct comparison. Even though I am in a PAL country, when I play a R1 DVD, it does play in NTSC...

 

[Christian Preischl]

If anybody owns R1 and R2, an image quality comparison would be very much appreciated. Obviously, an audio comparison is not necessary.

Chris

 

[James Reader]

I belive the UK has had the episodes released on VHS with intact music. Therefore, the rights for the home video release were already secured for the UK.

When people are paying £12.99 for 2 episodes, the price of the music rights aren't a big an issue as paying three times the price for ten times the episodes.

 

[stephen^wilson]

I seem too remember talk of releasing season sets of QL on vhs in the uk in the 90's but ultimately only 5 videos containing certain episodes were released and the reason given in the uk magazine tv zone was that the cost of licensing all the music would be too high for the whole series,so i'm pretty certain universal would still have had to negotiate for the music for the region 2 dvds.

 

[Adam_ME]

I'd appreciate that. I really wanna get this set, but I think the PAL speedup would drive me nutz with all the classic songs used.

 

[JasonLa]

I was just thinking can I play region 2 DVDs on my PC? I use videolan player. I never even thought about if DVDs play on PCs was region free or not.

 

[Cees Alons]

Yes you certainly can.
Note, however, that since 2002 (I think it was) all DVD-drives allow only 5 transitions (one transition being a switch to one or more DVD's being played of another region) before definitely locking to the region lastly played. So after playing several R1 DVD's, you can play one or more R2 discs, but when you play an R1 DVD again your firmware then has had two transitions. You may even have to be careful to plan which one will be your last.

Of course, rumour has it that firmware fixes are readily available on the internet to fix this problem. Also, prior drives didn't have the "feature" yet. Furthermore, nothing will formally stop you to have TWO (or more) DVD-drives in your PC, each one dedicated to a different region.


Cees

 

[Jesse Blacklow]

Or, even better, you can download the freeware program DVD43 and forget about fiddling with firmware. It's region-free on the fly! There are similar, more powerful products (such as AnyDVD or DVD Idle) that have trial periods, but you have to pay for them eventually.

 

[JasonLa]

My DVD drive was manufactured in 1999. So I guess I can play all the regions I want back and forth with no worries?

 

[Cees Alons]

Could be a yes!
You may want to check the device driver properties.

Assuming you have Windows XP: go to Control Panel/Performance and Maintenance/System/Hardware/Device Manager. Select the DVD drive and choose Properties. If there is a tab "DVD Region" it will also tell you about the number of changes left.


Cees

 

[MaraKM]

Any word on the PAL speedup? I was so excited by the news, I went ahead and placed an order on amazon.uk this weekend -- even though I don't yet have a multi-region player or a PAL-converting television. I've always been willing to wait for Region 1 releases, as no matter how tempting a particular release was, it never seemed worth the hundreds (thousands?) of dollars I'd have to spend to update my 'home theater' setup. But when QL got butchered, I promised myself that if another region released it properly, I'd go multi-region.

 

[Christian Preischl]

I don't have the R2 discs yet as I wanna wait until they come down in price a bit.

However, I just checked the R1 version of M.I.A. and it runs 48:24 min. According to the BBFC web site, the R2 version runs 46:07. Looks like PAL speedup.

Chris

 

[JasonLa]

I have win2k but not a problem I checked the properties of the drive from device manager and there is not DVD regions tab. I had forgot to add its a pioneer model DVD-114. Out of curiousity though I did check the other tabs and there was an advanced settings tab with regions choices and it said at the bottom I could change the region setting 4 more times current setting is region 1. :frowning:

Although it would be nothing for me to get a 2nd drive so I don't have to worry about it. Perhaps an older used drive for region 2 and keep the one in there now region 1. I picked this one up used a while back, but I think something I did forced me to have to update the firmware if I recall correctly, which probably added the regions switching limit.

 

[Cees Alons]

That sucks, but only slightly so, given the work-arounds.

Could be the firmware upgrade, but it could also be the software (driver) itself. I seem to remember that might be a "feature" of the OS now.

In practice: I have two DVD drives for more than three years (one is a burner as well) and neither have reached their limit yet.


Cees

 

[Jesse Blacklow]

Like I said above, nowadays you don't have to mess with firmware for unlimited region-free play. DVD43, AnyDVD, and a bunch of other programs do it without making any changes to firmware. As an added bonus, AnyDVD is claiming that it'll stop the installation of that nasty Sony "rootkit" program.

 

[SandiLand]

thanks for the warning!

 

[Jeff Jacobson]

Lite-On DVD drives have a utility to make the drive region free (called LtnRPC). This utility does not modify the firmware.

 

[Mike_Richardson]

Why don't you guys just pick up a region free DVD player? You can get them online from $20-$40 (or even from Best Buy) and don't have to worry about all those nasty software fixes

 

[Edward Schatz]

You need more than a region free. It needs to do PAL to NTSC conversion.

 

[MaraKM]

Sorry to be OT, but, my current dvd player seems to have died this morning (just says "MECHAN ERROR" when I try to open the tray) so I guess I'll be getting a multi-region player before the holidays. Any recommendations on where I should buy one?